1. Brooklyn is hot. Too many pieces of pavement.
2. I went to Brooklyn once six years ago to eat a Subway sandwich with my mother and father.
3. Barclays Center looks like an enormous solar-powered anthill.
4. I see a 4 year old there in a yogurt shop who is probably named Skylark Willoughby tell her au pair, "You know, let's just grab these to go and eat on the train."
5. My friend Jesse works there at a coffee shop with a poor title.
- His manager allows him one joke per day. This in itself is not a joke.
- One of Jesse's duties as a barista here is doing laundry. Hmm.
- Upon taking in the sight of grouchy, overheated and bedraggled me beyond his front glass door, Jesse wordlessly goes to the back of the shop and returns moments later with an iced coffee and homemade walnut chocolate cookie.
- Jesse is a good fellow. See above. Even if he does leave paint splootches on the floor at the Mill.
- The coffee here is sort of like how I imagine it would taste if the sun itself urinated into a tinfoil cup full of battery acid and gasoline. Effective.
6. Your chances of survival are slim if you ever find yourself in Prospect Park and take a wild hair to try and cross the street.
7. I have my suspicions that the entire front of the library in Prospect Park is a discarded backdrop from "Aida."
8. Dinosaur Barbecue is a very good restaurant.
9. I did a play once at Barksdale Willow Lawn called "Brooklyn Boy." I had a wonderful time. My role consisted of lying on a big soft bed speaking in a nasal tone of voice and eating Gummi Bears and Kit-Kats with-
10. Dan Ruth: a very wonderful actor and friend of mine who has a brilliant knack for sniffing out all sorts of fascinating figurines and posting fetching photos of them on Instagram. Dan was in Richmond for the past two weeks performing a one man show he wrote about his time in....Brooklyn. He was WONDERFUL. I watched this play from a corner of chairs containing the likes of Robert Throckmorton, The Debra Wagoner, Janine Serresseque, and Bo Wilson*. I felt like I was in the Honorees Box at the Kennedy Center Honors.
11. A very informative conversation held yesterday in my apartment about Ali Thibodeau learning to pole-dance last month in Germany with a 40-year old woman named Fanny revealed the following facts about Brooklyn:
- This same Ali Thibodeau was asked on a first date in Brooklyn by a gent who claimed to be a professional saxophoner and turned to be not that;
- JS Fauquet (person extraordinaire and personal piano accompanist to one Jolly Pingbald) once found himself at a bar featuring poles and scantily clad women dancing upon them. He was taken to a back room and offered to be part of a dance in which his lap would be a featured character. Upon politely expressing he would not be interested in such a dance, he asked her name, found it to be Desiree, and proceeded to have a lovely and long conversation with Desiree about Desiree's struggles with her fledgling side career as a dental hygienist which culminated in a hug and an fulfilling evening overall.
12. In the Broadway show "Brooklyn," an actress named Karen Olivo wore pair of olive green cargo pants I liked very much.
That's all I've got on Brooklyn at this time.
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After our dinner of barbecued dinosaur, I sprint to a trivia night at Waylon's on 10th Avenue and Jesse heads to a staged reading featuring one Dixon Cashwell.** But who wants to see that.
Trivia is hardcore. I will say no more. Classified information. Know that there was a tank top, a beautiful blond lady, and four brunettes who are inexorably bound for all eternity due to a period of eight weeks one winter when we all pretended as a unit to be Jewish. And at trivia- we don't fool around.
[Sidenote: There are two sailors at trivia this evening. It's Fleet Week. Once six years ago Alanna Wilson and I held a photo shoot in and around Times Square during Fleet Week. I was dressed as a naughty Dorothy Gale and we had a lot of fun. There were various set ups. Me peeping alluringly through gates, me dancing around street signs clutching my Frappucino and wearing my thick-soled black rubber Skechers Shape-Ups, me doing the Marilyn Monroe accidentally over a sidewalk grate in front of a wall with some high-handed graffiti, me seated uncomfortably in a stone sculpture of a catcher's mitt, and finally and finally relevantly, me posing between two sailors who were very good sports and not at all afraid (at least outwardly) of skanky Dorothy in her orthopedic shoes.]
After trivia, our leader- unyielding and bold in his tank top- hails us a small bus and we ride to what I at first assume is either the North Pole or at the very least Maine, but come to understand is actually Washington Heights. And it is lovely there. There are hills everywhere and gas stations serving grilled cheeses. There are steep stone staircases and a very beautiful and grand bridge named after George Washington which I believe was recently erected to commemorate the success of Lin-Manuel Miranda's first big hit musical, "In the Heights."
We climb some of these steep stone stairways and wind through bush-lined neighborhoods until we arrive at Hogwarts. Matt and Kara live at Hogwarts. Just old, grand, wise buildings made of flagstone (I'm guessing here- it was dark, but definitely flagstones in my mind's eye) which you are certain contain witches and wizards and very elderly retired classical musicians. I am impressed. There is a painting in the lobby. Kara takes stock of the developing bruise situation on her inner left knee which she acquired earlier in the day doing splits for strangers. Matt is pleased when I discover a surprise electrical outlet hiding behind his leather flip-flops.
We retire to their den and industriously consume six bags of chips while holding our cell phones up against our foreheads and humming wordlessly and aggressively at each other until timers go off. I have a grand time. I like them all a LOT.
I then take the train for the remainder of the month of May to arrive back in Long Island City just shy of 3:30AM. I enter Joseph and JS's apartment and immediately drop a heavy metal triangle on the floor just in case they were sleeping.
As I lie in the soft green cotton sheets near the embroidered narwahl pillow and try to drift off, I wonder about the tiny sylph** girl who boarded the train when I was about halfway home- around 7,764th St.- and sat directly across from me. She was garbed in a pinky flesh-toned sheer pantsuit covered neck to ankle in rhinestones. She crossed her legs neatly and her feet in their sensible black leather rhinestone studded flats were perfectly still through all the bounces of the train. In her lap she loosely gripped huge brown strappy stiletto heels lined all along the ankle strap with thick brown fur. She had an afro. And a tiara. We stared- each at the other. I wonder if she was as entranced by my topknot/Chuck Norris T-shirt/pink city scape poodle skirt/combat boots/pizza backpack look as I was by hers.
*Bo Wilson can form a playbill into the exact shape and size of a Pirouette cookie. He is also a talented playwright, but first thing's first.
**Dixon Cashwell is a very smart and talented actor/writer who looks intriguingly attractive in Instagram photos. We did a play in a museum basement once about the mating behavior of wildlife during the cold season. He wore cankles. I'm going to drink coffee with him this week. Whether he likes it or not.
***Sylph, as it turns out, is by one definition a type of hummingbird- the male of which has a long forked tail.
I am entranced by your writing. As one who should've done more "New York stuff" when I was your age, I shall do so now via your blog. (Isn't that the way most people live life these days? Well, those of us who read. For the others, youtube and instagram were invented). Vicarious may not be as much fun, but it's WAY cheaper.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you enjoy it. :)
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